Search

Creating Jobs and Growing Exports through Teamwork

Each day our FedEx teams work to ensure that every experience our customers have with us is outstanding. I am proud to lead our international team and help our customers reach new markets and new consumers for their goods and services. But to ensure our customers grow their international business, it is critically important that they have the resources and know-how to reach those new markets and consumers.

Accomplishing this goal requires teamwork, and I was honored that Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk could visit our Memphis Super Hub to see how we can deliver the world on time for our customers and to discuss how we can work together to achieve our shared goals of growing exports and strengthening the economic recovery. Secretary Locke Chairs the President’s Export Cabinet and Ambassador Kirk leads all trade policy efforts for the Administration. We sat down with a group of Memphis business leaders to discuss how best to meet the President’s ambitious goal of doubling exports in 5 years and creating 2 million jobs and to advance trade agreements that open markets for U.S. businesses.

To achieve the President’s ambitious goal of doubling exports will require substantial trade promotion and trade policy efforts and strong cooperation between the public and private sector. We at FedEx continue to strengthen our alliance with the Commercial Service to ensure our customers have the tools they need to reach new markets. We have helped launch a pioneering New to Market Program, whereby our sales force reaches out to FedEx customers who may not be reaching their full export potential and working with the Commercial Service we try to help them expand to new markets to grow their exports and their business.

On the trade policy front, we had a very productive conversation with Ambassador Kirk, Secretary Locke and Memphis business leaders about how the ongoing Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations with Australia, Brunei, Chile, Peru, New Zealand, Singapore, Vietnam – and the just recently joined Malaysia – and how the United States can knock down barriers to trade and investment that hold our companies back and constrain our exports. FedEx is a proud TPP Business Coalition Co-Chair, and we strongly support negotiation of a gold-standard agreement that will create new opportunities for us and our customers in the fast-growing Asia-Pacific region. We also continue to support the swift passage of the pending free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea as well. All these trade agreements will help our business and our customers reach new markets and grow. I am honored that President Obama appointed me to join the Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations, and I look forward to working with Ambassador Kirk and the other Committee Members to advance a strong trade policy agenda.

During these anxious and trying economic times, we must all work together to strengthen the economic recovery and create jobs. Trade can do both, and we will continue to press ahead and support strong trade promotion and trade policies that will grow exports and create jobs.